


Inosculation

by virdant



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Chinese Food, Food, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Taiwanese street food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-19 15:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13707804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: After the Red Dragon, Will and Hannibal transplant themselves across the Pacific Ocean, to a small island off the coast of China, to the night markets of Taipei.Hannibal watches as Will dips the spoon into the pig's brain soup. He breaks off a piece of the brain, catches a stalk of cabbage, and drinks.“Doesn’t taste like much,” Will says.“Yours would have been different,” Hannibal promises.“Pretty bland,” he continues, ruthlessly. “Soft. Mushy. Not very flavorful.”“Will,” Hannibal says, as mild as ever. Will can read the protestation in his voice. “Do you truly think you could be bland and flavorless to me?”As if Hannibal has never said anything, Will says, “Broth’s decent.” He scoops another bite, drinks it, and nods. “Is this how you would have cooked it?”“I don’t know,” Hannibal says. He knows that it’s merely a pig, but the sight of Will steadily consuming the brain is enough to drive him to honesty. “Perhaps.”“Hm.” He takes another bite. “Want some?”





	Inosculation

**Author's Note:**

> inosculation (n.) - a natural phenomenon in which trunks, branches, or roots of two trees grow together
> 
>  
> 
> me, two days ago: i think i'll write a cute story about dogs for the lunar new year  
> me, last night: i just want to write about will and hannibal moving to taiwan to open a offal soup stall in shilin night market.
> 
>    
> so, there is a dog. there is also a lot of food. food is so great. i love food. i hope this story makes you half as hungry as it made me.

“Is that _brain_?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Will stares at the signage. Months of convalescence has honed his previous inability to read Chinese into a slow stuttering fluency. He stares at the brightly lit sign, going down the list of offal offerings slowly. Pig’s stomach. Pig’s blood. Pig’s brain. Around them, the crowd ebbs and flows, brushing against them like a warm stream of summer humidity. There are few physical boundaries, in the crowd of a night market in Taipei.

“Will?” Hannibal asks.

Few people give them a second look—they’ve already encountered more than a handful of Caucasian tourists. They’ve passed a dozen of them this evening alone. Taipei, despite its location and language, is deceptively welcoming of foreigners, especially where they’ve taken residence by the Yangming Mountains.

“I want to try it,” Will says, finally. He looks at the signage, and back at Hannibal. “The soup.”

Hannibal inclines his head, just a fraction.

It’s far from the lavish surroundings in Baltimore, or even Florence. Will and Hannibal sit opposite each other on the plastic picnic tables beside the food stall—indoors, in a large plaza full of various foods and loud voices, the humid air circulating with help from a rank of robust fans. Will sets the paper bowl before them, two transparent plastic spoons in his other hand.

The steam is fragrant with the smell of ginger. Two small brain halves float in the bowl. Chopped stalks of Chinese cabbage, several slices of ginger, and the sprinkle of scallions float in the clear broth. It smells eerily similar to the chicken soup that Hannibal brought him in the hospital.

Hannibal watches as Will dips the spoon into the soup. He breaks off a piece of the brain, catches a stalk of cabbage, and drinks.

“Doesn’t taste like much,” Will says.

“Yours would have been different,” Hannibal promises.

“Pretty bland,” he continues, ruthlessly. “Soft. Mushy. Not very flavorful.”

“Will,” Hannibal says, as mild as ever. Will can read the protestation in his voice. “Do you truly think you could be bland and flavorless to me?”

As if Hannibal has never said anything, Will says, “Broth’s decent.” He scoops another bite, drinks it, and nods. “Is this how you would have cooked it?”

“I don’t know,” Hannibal says. He knows that it’s merely a pig, but the sight of Will steadily consuming the brain is enough to drive him to honesty. “Perhaps.”

“Hm.” He takes another bite. “Want some?”

 

* * *

 

 

Taipei is a large city, the streets layered over each other in such chaos that on their taxi ride from the airport to their new home, the driver gets lost. Will and Hannibal sit with a space between them; Will instinctively goes to fasten the seatbelt, but the lock’s been tucked away under plastic sheeting, and so he makes the hour-and-a-half drive in a precarious perch among the seat cushions.

Their home is uptown in Tian Mu, a surprisingly bilingual corner of the city. The restaurants all have English printed underneath the Chinese characters. Will throws himself into learning the language all the same. Hannibal is already familiar with the basics of it, and they develop fluency at remarkable speed.

There are Chinese subtitles on all of the television channels. They watch movies in English and practice reading the Chinese subtitles. Eventually, they make the switch to dubbed movies and native television shows. Immersion is, as always, the fastest way to learn a language, and immersed they are.

The first summer, they take to ducking in all manner of storefronts to escape the stifling humidity and heat of a subtropical summer. In the winter, they grow used to rain in lieu of snow. They eat very well. Taipei is a gourmand’s dream city; the traditional markets offer fresh produce and meats. The merchants are cheerful and Hannibal’s increasing fluency combined with his willingness to pay for quality earn him their respect and affection. “Ginger,” they say, adding a fresh hunk into the bag. “Scallions.” Hannibal comes back with more than he purchased every time. Unlike farmer’s markets in the States, available only once or twice a week, the traditional markets are open every day except Monday, the traditional day of rest.

Some days, they go out to eat. Even Hannibal is hard-pressed to find issue with every restaurant they step into. The flavors are different, but good all the same. Will finds all of the food pleasant, letting Hannibal make the final judgement on which restaurants they will frequent and which they will avoid.

(After their first argument, Will goes into a McDonalds out of spite, and finds the quality far better than the Big Macs he’s consumed in the past, in the States. There truly is something about McDonalds in foreign countries. He doesn’t go back often, but sometimes—)

But the night markets are another thing entirely. Will would have thought that Hannibal would want to avoid them, but Hannibal takes to them, penis-shaped pineapple cakes in all. They spend a month systemically working their way through the Shilin Night Market’s offerings: pearl milk tea and quail eggs and porked-stuffed roasted sesame buns and squid skewers and a thousand more dishes. Sometimes, they travel further out to taste some other night markets, but Shilin’s reputation is well-deserved.

Every time they go, Will orders pig’s brain soup and drinks it, eyes meeting Hannibal’s.

“It could never compare to yours,” Hannibal assures him, every time.

 

* * *

 

 

After a month, they get a dog. Hannibal names her Encephalitis.

Dogs are hard to raise in the city. It’s hot and humid for over half of the year, the buildings tightly packed like sardines. It’s far from the open fields of Wolf Trap, or even the dog parks of Baltimore. Their apartment is far from the vast expanse of Hannibal’s Baltimore home or Will’s house. Hannibal and Will are already on top of each other.

Encephalitis is not a small dog. Her nails click on the tile as she romps her way around the apartment, and she tugs at the leash every time Will takes her out.

“We aren’t calling her that,” Will says.

Hannibal is in their kitchen, slicing mangos. The air conditioning is running in their living room, a barely-there hum. Summer has arrived, in all of its sticky glory, and with it come the tropical fruits. Hannibal says, “It is a perfectly respectable name,” as he sets the plate of fresh mango before Will.

Will forks a piece, closing his eyes briefly. It’s sweet, the flesh soft. The juice runs off in rivulets each time he lifts another piece. He could chew it with his tongue alone. The faintest hint of acidity is eased away with the mellow sweetness of an apple.

“This year’s mangoes,” Hannibal says, “have a touch more apple in them.”

“It’s a mango.” Encephalitis nudges his knee, as close to begging as she gets, and Will scratches her ears.

“Fruit grafting is taken very seriously, here.” He turns back to their fridge, removing a dragon fruit. He begins to peel it, revealing white flesh dotted with tiny black seeds. “These mango trees have been spliced with apples for sweetness and bananas for texture in the past. This year, I have been informed, the produce is skewed for sweetness.”

Will blinks. He forks another piece. It’s sweet. He’s always associated mangoes with a sour tang, but it’s not present. He eats another piece, and each chew floods his mouth with the summer sun. Encephalitis’ tail thumps, once. Her fur is soft under his fingers.

He’s halfway done with the plate when Hannibal takes it away, replacing it with chopped dragon fruit. The tiny seeds crunch under his teeth, and sense memory brings the ortolan back to the forefront of his mind.

The dragon fruit is mild, a refreshing burst of juice and the faintest hint of sweetness underneath the crunch of tiny black seeds grinding to dust between his molars.

He eats the entire plate. Encephalitis is warm and steady against his leg. Hannibal watches him with avid fascination.

He doesn’t say anything. Perhaps he doesn’t need to, in the blanketing humidity of a sub-tropical summer.

 

* * *

 

 

The kitchens in Taipei aren’t even half the size of Hannibal’s kitchen in Baltimore, to say nothing of his meat freezer in the basement. For months, while they settle in, Hannibal contents himself with the offerings that the local traditional market has: leafy greens and root vegetables freshly harvested, chicken slaughtered that morning, prime cuts of beef and pork and lamb—there is plenty, all fresh, all prime quality. He’s picked to live near the best traditional market for a reason. The bilingual nature of the uptown location is only a bonus.

The summer season is ending, in mid-October, when Hannibal studies their freezer and decides that there’s space for alternatively-sourced meats.

Encephalitis snuffles when he leaves. She follows him into the kitchen when he returns, her nails clicking on the tile. Will is resting, sated from a day of walking and eating. It’s just Hannibal and Encephalitis, as he checks on the meat and puts it away in the fridge.

The next day, he sears liver, chops heart tartare, and slides layers of brain into a clear broth fragrant with ginger and scallions, speckled with blood-red goji berries.

Will eats. “Pretty bland,” he concludes at the end of it. “Did you feed this guy a parsley and thyme infusion before you cut his brain out of his skull?”

“Dear Will,” Hannibal replies, his own meal barely touched in favor of devouring Will’s expressions. “Do you truly think this pig could have compared to you?”

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, for breakfast, they go to the store two blocks down and get Chinese cruller wrapped in roasted flatbread. The puffed dough is fried a flaky golden brown, and the flatbread is savory and liberally covered with sesame seeds. They order it with sweetened soymilk. Will dips the sandwiches in the soymilk. Salt and sesame from the flatbread, the sharp crunch of the crisp cruller, and the mellow sweetness of the soymilk layer themselves on his tongue.

Encephalitis’ tail thumps from where she sits. Hannibal feeds her a bite of the bread.

“It’s not good for her,” Will points out.

It was a very small bite, and Hannibal says as much.

Will frowns. He eats more of his breakfast.

Hannibal orders his cruller wrapped in a savory crepe cooked with egg and scallion. The oil and scallions fill the air as he meticulously makes his way through his own breakfast.

Encephalitis is well-trained, well-behaved. She sits and doesn’t beg for scraps. After breakfast, they reward her with a long walk before going back to their apartment. In the summer, they turn on the air conditioning and let the humidity ease off. In the winter, they plug in oil heaters to warm the concrete walls.

They are in the country legally, alien resident cards and all. They’re gainfully employed. Some afternoons they do their alleged work, just to keep up appearances. Per Will, Hannibal is not allowed a psychiatric practice.

It’s a peaceful sort of life, despite, or perhaps because of, the hustle and the bustle of the city. The streets are always busy. There is a steady drone of noise, ever-present, that drowns out all other thought. Some days, mosquito-net repairers amble by, their trucks loudly blaring their adverts. The garbage trucks play Fur Elise to announce their presence. The skies are heavy with the presence of hundreds of thousands of people.

Instead of drowning, Will finds himself afloat. He goes on long walks with Encephalitis, even in the summer humidity, or the winter rains. When the typhoons hit, he walks in the lashing wind and rain. He braces himself through the aftershocks of each earthquake when they come. Through it all, there is the food; there is Hannibal.

Hannibal goes out, occasionally. He always comes back with more meat. Sometimes, Will accompanies him. Usually he stays in the apartment, asleep, Encephalitis on the floor beside him.

 

* * *

 

 

Encephalitis is chewing on what is probably a femur. Will scratches behind her ear before padding to the kitchen with her at his heels; Hannibal’s cooked: a protein scramble made with sausage cured at home. Hannibal’s experienced enough that Will isn’t concerned about botulism. He eats the protein scramble with mild relish, the sausage dotted with cloves and cinnamon and Sichuan peppercorns and vibrant chili peppers. The eggs are soft and buttery, the ground meat sharp on the tongue and numbing along the insides of his cheeks. When he finishes, he sets to peeling the bowl of lychee beside it. Their skins are pink and prickle his fingers, but underneath, their flesh is firm and translucent. When he bites down, his teeth part through the sweet meat of the fruit until he reaches the seed in the center. The juice fills his mouth; his tongue curls around the flesh until he works his way to the bone of the seed.

He spits it into his palm, chewing and swallowing the sweet lychee. He eats a dozen of the fruit, scraping flesh away from the pit with his teeth, Encephalitis gnawing on her bone the entire time.

Hannibal says, “I have been thinking of a change in pace.”

“Did you want to leave?”

“No,” he says. “Merely a change.”

“You still aren’t allowed a psychiatric practice,” Will says. Encephalitis noses his shin. He reaches down and pats her on the head. “Do you really think that people would go to the psychiatric practice of a white guy?” He blinks, accordingly rearranges the plateaus of logic and reasoning, and admits, “You’d probably get a lot of business.”

“Not that,” Hannibal assures him. “Something a little less obvious, if anybody came looking.”

Will glances up.

“Shall we go to the night market again, this evening?” Hannibal asks.

“The fruit stands are overpriced and a rip-off,” Will says, automatically. Hannibal always ends up buying a bag anyways.

“I was thinking something slightly different.”

 

* * *

 

 

They sit across from each other on the plastic stools. The fluorescent lights above are bright and harsh. Around them, the crowd ebbs and flows, their chatter as loud as a waterfall. They sit, as if they were back in Baltimore: in Hannibal’s office, in his home. There is only a single serving, in a white paper bowl. Will holds two plastic spoons in his hand. “Bland,” Will says, as he always does. “Broth is good.”

“It can hardly compare,” Hannibal begins.

Last night, he served the brains of a particularly rude man, who had chewed his gum loudly in the trains despite all of the people around him pointing that it was against regulation. He seared the brains, cooked them in a clear broth of ginger and scallions, placed them on top of a bed of Chinese cabbage so they floated, in coiled curls, to the top of the bowl. Will drank the entire bowl.

Will clicks his tongue. He dips the plastic spoon into the bowl, scooping out another mouthful, humming around the savory broth. The cabbage is crisp as he chews. The brain is soft; he could chew it with his tongue against the roof of his mouth if he wanted. Instead, he sets his teeth into it, parting flesh in decisive bites.

“The brain,” Will says. “The center of all thought, rational or irrational.”

“Soup is filling,” Hannibal replies. “Well regarded as a comfort food.”

“And we shy away from the mind.”

“The broth is mild,” Hannibal says. “Ginger and scallions. Easy on the stomach.”

Will sets the spoon into the paper bowl. Directly, he asks, “Will they even allow foreigners to own food stalls?”

“I am assured they shall.”

He does not say it is a terrible idea, to serve the brains of pigs to the locals and tourists. He stares at the menu, and says, “Stomach? Pig’s blood soup?”

“I am capable of preparing many dishes,” Hannibal says. He looks at the menu on the stall before them.

Will picks up the spoon again. He continues to drink the soup, steady spoonful after steady spoonful. “And here I thought I was special,” he finally said.

“Dear Will,” Hannibal says, his back a touch straighter in offence. “Do you truly believe that any of them would have compared to you?”

He glances up, meets Hannibal’s eyes, and says, “No.” He finishes the soup; Hannibal remains in eye-contact the entire time. He asks, “How would you have cooked it?”

“I do not know that I would have,” Hannibal says.

“Consumed me raw,” Will says.

“Unadorned,” Hannibal corrects. “Exactly as you are.”

Will stares down at the empty bowl. “You’ll have to include real pork,” he says. “If you want to have enough for a night’s worth of service.”

 

* * *

 

 

Will attends the grand opening of Hannibal’s stall in the plaza of the Shilin Night Market. The sight of a foreigner, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, serving local delicacies such as pig’s blood soup is too enticing to stay away, and the locals line up in droves.

Hannibal cooks and serves and cooks and serves. The line has only grown when he's forced to close service for the night, his stores depleted. The customers wander away. They are already making plans to try again tomorrow.

Encephalitis sniffs at Hannibal’s legs when he rejoins the two of them. Will holds her leash loosely, even in the crowd and hubbub of disappointed customers. She’s well-behaved, knows better than to pull on the leash or go after dropped scraps. Despite all of Hannibal’s spoiling, she knows that Will is the one to hold her leash.

“Will,” Hannibal says, mild. Will can recognize triumph, exhaustion, pride, and a dozen other emotions in the crease of Hannibal's eyes. “Did you wish to try any?”

“I thought you were out of stock,” Will replies. The crowd sifts around them. They speak in English, and nobody gives them a second glance.

“For you? Never.”

Hannibal hands him a paper bowl. The outside is decorated with stylized pink sakura blossoms. Inside, the broth is translucent, fragrant with fat and ginger. Scallions float on the top. A handful of Chinese cabbage support three thick slices of brain. They sit at the plastic tables before Hannibal's stall, on rickety stools. Encephalitis settles at Will's feet.

Will dips the spoon in. The brain parts easily, and he scoops up a bite of the gray matter, a stalk of cabbage, a helping of the broth. He closes his eyes as he drinks, reading a life of derision and scorn, a cacophony of fear in the very last moments, and finally the care and affection in Hannibal's hands as he prepares this meal for Will and Will alone.

Hannibal watches.

Will opens his eyes. He smiles.

“It’s delicious.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kinokodon, adzusai, and pannchi for their encouragement and love, especially as I watched my way through hannibal and screamed in terror the whole time. Special thanks to ellie for putting up with me in person. I'm (a little) sorry i keep talking about cannibalism during lunch.
> 
> I'm not sure how i ended up here, in Hannibal fandom, but i'm delighted to be here all the same. there... may be more of Will and Hannibal's food stall selling "pig" brain soup in the future. 
> 
> Annotated PDF with thoughts [ [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2vvz9m657e34p60/Inosculation_Annotated.pdf?dl=0) ]
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/virdant) for writing, rambles, and more! i'm @virdant on both.
> 
>  
> 
> [reblog on tumblr here](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/170969008496/fic-hannibal-tv-inosculation)
> 
>  
> 
> kudos and comments are always appreciated.


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